The present invention relates to seeding video programs with interactive items and, more particularly, seeding video programs with episodic interactive items.
Video programs, such as streaming media videos, are often seeded with interactive items containing hidden information. These interactive items may be visual representations of landmarks, such as buildings or monuments; goods, such as vehicles, appliances, furniture, clothing or jewelry; or virtually any other kind of item appearing in a video. The hidden information is generally revealed when a person clicks or taps on the items while watching the video on a computer or smart phone. Hidden information may include, for example, item descriptions, pricing information and web links.
To seed a video program with an interactive item, a developer working at a computer running a video seeding program typically tags the item at a frame of the video by drawing a boundary around it and assigning hidden information to it. The program then programmatically tracks the item across other frames of the video, building an item record that stores the on-screen location and size of the item in every frame of the video where it appears. When a person watching the video on a computer or smart phone subsequently clicks or taps on the item, the computer or smart phone confirms from the item record that the item is present at the clicked or tapped location and frame. The hidden information associated with the item is then revealed to the viewer.
Items in video programs often change visual appearance across frames. For example, as a video camera pans across a scene or a person in a scene moves, items may move, rotate, change in shape, change in size, brighten, dim or undergo other kinds of visual changes.
Moreover, some items in video programs are episodic. Episodic items disappear from the screen after a first scene and reappear in later scenes filmed at the same location as the first scene. For example, a video may be an interview conducted between two people at different locations. The video may switch back and forth between Location 1 where Person 1 asks questions and Location 2 where Person 2 answers questions. In that situation, items on screen may disappear and reappear as the video location switches back and forth between locations.
Video seeding programs often suffer tracking loss when attempting to track episodic items across a video program. Some processes stop tracking an episodic item when it disappears from screen at the boundaries of the scene where it is tagged (i.e., the start and end frame of the scene). In these environments, the developer has the burden to separately tag the item in every scene of the video where the item appears to achieve tracking of the item across the entire video. Other processes keep searching for the item after it disappears from screen and resume tracking the item when and if it reappears in another scene. In these environments, substantial computer time and resources are wasted searching for the item in frames of the video where the item does not appear.